Damian Rogers - An Alphabet for Joanna: A Portrait of My Mother in 26 Fragments

ALSO BY DAMIAN ROGERS

Poetry

PAPER RADIO

DEAR LEADER

PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF CANADA

Copyright 2020 Damian Rogers

Images and photographs copyright 2020 Damian Rogers

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2020 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

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Knopf Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: An alphabet for Joanna : a portrait of my mother in 26 fragments / Damian Rogers.

Names: Rogers, Damian, author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20189045787 | Canadiana (ebook) 20189045795 | ISBN 9780735273030 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780735273054 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCSH: Rogers, Damian. | LCSH: Rogers, DamianFamily. | LCSH: Mothers and daughters. | LCSH: Children of mentally ill mothersCanadaBiography. | LCSH: Mentally ill mothersCanadaBiography. | CSH: Poets, Canadian (English)Biography.

Classification: LCC PS8635 O425 Z46 2020 | DDC C811/.6dc23

Text design: Kate Sinclair

Cover art and design: Kate Sinclair

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For the mothers

and the daughters

and the dudes

The thing is to join the current in the depths.

CLAES OLDENBURG

ARTIST S NOTEBOOK

at the end of the story, we will know more than we know now.

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN ,

THE SNOW QUEEN

But will my heart be broken

when the night meets the morning sun?

GERRY GOFFIN & CAROLE KING ,

WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME TOMORROW

eagle / earnings / earrings / earthquake / easel / eccentricity / echo / echolalia / eclipse / economy / ecosystem / ecstasy / edge / edification / education / effacement / effectiveness / efficiencies / effort eggs / egress / egret / ejection / elasticity / elation / elder / elective / electricity / elegy / element / elevator / eligibility / elimination / elision / elitism / ellipsis / elocution / elopement / emanation / emancipation / embarrassment / ember / embodiment / embroidery / emergency / emotion / empiricism / emulation / emulsion / encaustic / enchantment / endearment / endlessness / enigma / enmeshment / envelopes / environment / envy / epigenetics / episode / equality / erasure / eros / erosion / error / escalation / ESCAPE / eternity / evacuation / examination / exclusion / exhaustion / exit / exposure / expulsion / extremities / eye

I MAKE MY life with my mother into a story, and the story makes me.

When my mother, Joanna, escaped from the locked dementia unit at her under-resourced nursing home in Buffalo, I was far away in Toronto, oblivious. Id fallen asleep early that night, and I stayed asleep until morning. I slept through the call the facility made to my landline after the police brought my mother back around midnight. The nursing home management had waited until she was found to tell me shed vanished. As a result, I didnt know she was in danger until she was out of it. When I finally talked to the nursing home, nobody there could explain to me how Joanna had managed to make a break into the night on her own. I still dont know what happened to her in those hours she wandered outside by herself. All I can do is imagine.

Although I know it is an impossible fantasy, I imagine an alternate reality in which she had planned her adventure for weeks. I imagine that shed monitored those who monitored her, waiting for the moment when she might slip out. I imagine that shed carefully chosen her clothes that day; that she had braided her long brown hair into a smooth inch-thick rope that hung down the centre of her back. In my minds eye, I dress her in the soft blue cotton sweatshirt my husband, Mike, wouldnt let me buy her at Target, the one that read WEEKEND WANDERER. (Thats really inappropriate, hed told me when I pulled it off the sale rack.) In my imagination, Joanna walks the streets of Buffalo at midnight feeling no fear. I see her smile at the sensation of cool air on her face, I see her eyes focused and alert to the world around her as she moves freely through space.

I have no way of knowing if Joanna enjoyed her brief break from institutional life, or whether she was frightened, aware immediately that she was lost in a completely unfamiliar landscape. Since arriving at the home, shed only left the building when escorted to her appointments at a neurology clinic. I do know that the police found her in the parking lot of a Sunoco gas station eight blocks away from the nursing home, two hours after the staff at the facility realized theyd misplaced her between their scheduled checks. It remains a mystery why the alarm system didnt go off when she left. She wore a wander guard around her ankle that never came off; it made a squarish lump under her socks. It looked like a blocky plastic watch from the eighties, except that its smooth grey face did not tell time. The wander guard should have triggered the alarm when Joanna stepped onto the elevator that took her from the fourth floor down to the main floor. It should have set off an alarm when she walked through the nursing homes front door.

When the police approached Joanna, she returned with them to the facility without complaint. My fantasy of her self-determination dissolves here. In reality, she was incapable of even the simplest form of planning. Perhaps she had followed a visiting family onto the elevator and out the door. She looked young, hardly a strand of grey in her uncombed hair. I imagine her more accurately in pyjama pants, no coat in the mid-March chill, wearing slip-on shoes. Was she wearing shoes? I hope she was wearing shoes. I picture her reaching the parking lot, swaying slightly, unsure of her next move. The gas station with its twenty-four-hour food mart selling chips and lottery tickets was one of the only businesses in the neighbourhood. It makes sense to me that she would have been easily guided into a police car. There was nowhere else to go.

A nurse checked Joannas body for signs of trauma and found no bruises, no abrasions. As she changed Joanna out of her damp clothes, the nurse joked with her. You decided to take a little walk! How did you get out of the building?

Door. Door, my mother muttered, lying down on her bed and turning her back on the woman, who was not so much younger than she was. Im tired.